Meet Zoey Penny

Who is Zoey, you may ask? And what exactly is her "Team"? Well, first of all, Zoey is Zoey Aster Penny, a beautiful, sweet little girl, born September 20th, 2009, with Progeria. This is a very rare and fatal condition characterized by the appearance of accelerated aging in children 7 to 10 times faster than normal. In fact, the name Progeria is from the greek and means "prematurely old". Zoey is one of only 78 children in the entire world with this disease, 17 in the United States. Although they are born looking healthy, children with Progeria begin to display many of the signs of aging including growth failure, loss of body fat and hair, stiff and aged looking skin, stiffness of the joints, and generalized atherosclerosis, including heart disease and strokes. And, all of these children will die of heart disease or stroke at an average age of only 13 years.